THORNTON — Patrons in the Arby’s parking lot at East 84th Avenue and Grant Street heard a hellish crash Thursday night — the sounds of shattering glass and crunching metal from a collision that killed five people.

“I won’t ever forget that sound,” said Chrissy Peña, who turned in time to see rescuers rushing to help.

Word soon came back across the busy four-lane street east of Interstate 25 that many people were dead.

“I’m still shaking,” Peña said nearly two hours later.

Witnesses told Thornton police that a woman in a Ford Expedition with two children was speeding and driving erratically as she headed south on Grant from at least East 88th Avenue to East 84th Avenue about 5:50 p.m.

Shortly before reaching the intersection, she swerved into the northbound lane and clipped the rear of a Mazda DX sedan.

Her sport utility vehicle struck a raised median and went airborne, landing directly on top of a small Chevrolet S-10 pickup.

Four bodies were found in the crushed pickup immediately after the crash. As firefighters tried to move the twisted wreckage just before 10 p.m., they found a fifth body.

After landing on the truck, the Expedition rolled across a parking lot onto its side and through the front of an Urban Mattress store, as employees and the owner ran for cover. One person inside was injured by flying glass.

“Those people never could imagine their lives would end in the blink of an eye like that,” said Paul White.

He and others stood about 200 feet away to watch the cleanup of the wreckage of the three vehicles and the damaged store, a brick-and-glass building that appears to have once been a service station.

Thornton police spokesman Matt Barnes said investigators are trying to determine why the woman was driving in such a reckless manner. He said he did not know whether drugs or alcohol had been ruled out.

“We’ve got several witnesses who said she was driving erratically down Grant Street, and she accelerated to a high rate of speed as she approached the intersection,” he said. “Obviously, we’re still investigating.”

The names of the dead and injured had not been released Thursday night.

The three people in the Expedition and the driver of the Mazda were all rushed to hospitals, but their conditions were not available.

Joey Bunch was a reporter for 12 years at The Denver Post before leaving to join The Gazette in Colorado Springs. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry. He likes stories more than reports.